


We Are Not Who You Made Us

by scribblemyname



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Break-Up of Friendships, Coping, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt, Friendship, Gen, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Relationship, Trauma, Unexpected Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 12:38:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3290615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There isn't any one thing that she can articulate. It's the way he copes so well but it feels like the difference between homesign and an actual sign language. It's his own way of coping, his own way of incorporating her suggestions but not actually having the talk with Steve that he can't be the person was before. It's the way James holds himself stiff and rigid and doesn't tell Stark when it hurts but winces for Jemma when she asks. It's all these tiny, little details that are all James and not therapy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are Not Who You Made Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hiddencait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiddencait/gifts).



> After I wrote this, I wandered through your profile and bumped into your own fic on the pairing. All similarities are purely serendipitous, but after thinking on the matter (with help), I decided that the coincidence was too good not to share. I hope you like.
> 
> Thank you so much to my beta, geckoholic.

"I'm not…" He bites down on the words and hesitates.

It reminds Jemma of Fitz. It makes her heart ache just a little bit. "James?" It's the name he gave her; it's the name she uses.

He looks up at her, eyes dark pools of nameless hurt. "I'm not Bucky anymore."

And that she understands. There's only one person who still knows who Bucky was and hopes for the return of that man. She looks at James with empathy. "Steve?" she asks gently.

James sighs. He holds out his arm as it makes an unhappy clicking sound. "Stark is trying to fix this."

When he uses the name 'Stark,' Jemma does not know whether he knows that it's Tony he's referring to or Howard. The mind can be fragile with its infinite strength, and Jemma decided early to never use a name with him that James doesn't use first. She doesn't like to tax his mind when it's been played with far too many times to avoid all the damage. Instead, she comes over without questions and clinically examines the join to his flesh because he holds it out to her.

Jemma is not entirely a medical doctor, though she is licensed for and practices field medicine. She's a biochemist and only one member of the large team devoted to James' therapy.

"My partner and I," she blurts suddenly, "They used to call us FitzSimmons." She pokes something that should hurt and gets no outward reaction. She looks into his face, pokes again, unsure if it's his response or his body's that's tangled up.

He seems to take it as something else, as her searching for interest. "What do they call you now?" he asks, a shrewd light in his eyes.

She catches her breath. "Jemma. I'm just Jemma now."

He studies her face, but she drops her gaze back to his arm and stimulates the area again.

"Can you feel that?" she asks. "Does it hurt?"

He takes long enough that she's not sure if he heard her questions or plans to answer, but eventually he does. "Yes."

* * *

Steve calls him Bucky, and Jemma doesn't judge him for it. James has made no effort to correct Steve on anything.

Jemma's not a therapist, but she's not blind either. She carefully runs the next scheduled lab draw to try and isolate whatever makes James' blood so different from the norm. She mentions quietly, "He'd listen if you asked him to treat you differently."

James glances up sharp and surprised, head jerking enough to send too long strands of hair flying into his eyes. He has needed a haircut for weeks now. Steve's attempts to take care of James are permitted but only infrequently.

The silence stretches. She regrets having broken it. "Never mind," she murmurs and forces herself to focus on removing the needle and cleaning up after it.

"Did your partner listen?" James' voice is dark and unfriendly.

She looks up as she takes a step back, but she doesn't get the feeling he's dangerous to her. His gaze follows her. He's listening.

Slowly, Jemma shakes her head. "Not really, but…" She smiles sadly. "I was the Steve in our relationship."

And now she isn't.

James narrows his eyes thoughtfully, then nods and pulls down his sleeve. "Thank you, Jemma."

She's not sure if his parting words are automatic, the same he always delivers after a medical visit, or if they are perhaps something more than the common politeness and apply to more than the drawing of blood.

* * *

Fitz stays out of her way. She should stay out of his. Of course, sometimes she approaches him, biting her lip and hoping to see even the faintest glimmer of their friendship, but every time, he walks away and she is disappointed. Again.

* * *

The Avengers are a separate organization from SHIELD, really, when it comes down to it. Bobbi and Mack, Hunter and Skye, May and Jemma and Fitz should have no reason to ever come up to the Avengers Tower, meet JARVIS, endure the hard, suspicious gaze of Tony Stark, or barely contain their science crush on Bruce Banner (okay, _her_ science crush, but Fitz is gone and there's no one there to judge). On paper, they have all gone their separate ways.

What's on paper has never been entirely true.

The Avengers have been known to take intelligence from the new SHIELD. The former Strike Team Delta and Deputy Director have clearly always been close to May and Coulson and just as clearly still are. The two organizations exchange resources when an arrangement can be made, and James needs more help than Stark's staff provides.

Jemma is the last of the five top SHIELD biochemists. She's the one assigned to help James with the biological repercussions of his time as a HYDRA asset. Somehow she ends up being the one he turns to or calls in when he needs other, more mundane medical help. Sometimes he calls simply because Stark has no idea how much damage 'fixing' the arm sometimes causes.

* * *

"Can you move your fingers for me?" Jemma watches the response rate, the degree of flexion. "Does it hurt to stretch your hand out further? Can you try?"

James tries. His eyes narrow slightly in pain.

She hesitates and thinks back to his nerve response from previous visits and his hidden reactions. She thinks he must be showing it on purpose.

"Does it hurt worse than the join here?" She indicates where metal meets flesh but does not touch.

He shakes his head.

Flummoxed, Jemma buries herself in her charts. He has chosen to show her something his other doctors still note as absent on their own charts. He doesn't respond to pain, even when he admits to feeling it.

"I asked him to call me 'James,'" he says abruptly.

She looks at him, at his open gaze, and smiles. "That's wonderful." She catches his other hand spontaneously and squeezes it. Then stops, breath caught. This isn't Fitz and isn't someone who responds well to sudden touch.

But the metal fingers flex and then turn over to curl around hers.

She stares at their joined hands for a moment, heart pattering hard, almost painfully. She doesn't know what to do with this. She doesn't… She looks up into James' eyes and sees that he's trying to read her response.

She rolls with it. She smiles, a little more shyly this time. She gently tugs her hand free and goes to work on the nerves in his flesh arm.

* * *

"Dr. Banner?" Jemma rarely pipes up around Bruce Banner. He is and has always been one of the scientists she essentially wants to be one day.

He looks up mildly from puttering around the communal kitchen with his cup of tea, earl grey if she smells it correctly, and smiles in that nonthreatening, welcoming way that makes her bite down on a stream of things she really should not say.

Things like _Your work on gamma radiation and serum interactions fascinates me. How did you come to your conclusions concerning altering serum properties with gamma rays before or after contact with the human body?_ Not only is she not here for herself, the last thing she wants to do is bring up unpleasant thoughts of his own personal experiences with gamma radiation and the Hulk. She wants to be taken seriously.

So she squelches her inner awe and asks politely, "Do you think James has been skipping therapist appointments?"

Banner blinks in surprise. "Why do you think that?" he asks slowly.

She hesitates. There isn't any one thing that she can articulate. It's the way he copes so well but it feels like the difference between homesign and an actual sign language. It's his own way of coping, his own way of incorporating her suggestions but not actually having the talk with Steve that he can't be the person he was before. It's the way James holds himself stiff and rigid and doesn't tell Stark when it hurts but winces for Jemma when she asks. It's all these tiny, little details that are all James and not therapy.

"I imagine he's quite good at dealing with recurring trauma," she finally says. "Nevertheless, he shows signs of slow recovery and behaviors indicating he has not yet moved to an aftermath mindset. He's still at war, in a way."

Banner sighs and sets his teacup on the counter. "I suppose he is."

Steve. The only war James is still fighting is the one to discover and define who he is.

Jemma frowns. She had been the Steve for Fitz, and she knows how hard it is to be the living reminder of all a person can never be again. "I don't suppose anyone's talked to Steve about it?" she asks. There had been those who talked to her.

But Banner shakes his head apologetically, and Jemma sighs. It's left to her then.

* * *

She finds Steve in the gym, punishing a rather innocent punching bag by sending it flying off the hook with a hole in its side. It's leaking sand, and she thinks there's a painful metaphor in there she'd rather ignore.

"Captain?"

He whirls, startled, then looks sheepish. "I'm sorry. Didn't know anyone else was in here."

She's one of the scientists and small and female, rarely seen in the field. She supposes that makes her seem a little less threatening or dangerous than the other women in the tower. She fits in the same category with Jane, maybe Darcy and her taser in a pinch, but not the agents and superheroes regardless of her status with SHIELD. She's the biochemist that patches James up and tries to isolate the various serums and compounds he's been injected with over the decades and perhaps undo some of the damage.

The last time she had to do damage control, she had to take herself entirely out of her best friend's life.

"You can't treat him like he's Bucky," she says, surprising both of them.

Steve stiffens and his jaw hardens. She knows that will go places she can't keep up with, so she stops him out of hand.

"He's your friend, your _best_ friend, and you can't live without him." She swallows down the pain. She isn't just talking about Steve. "He's like the other part of you and whenever he's not there, there's a hole inside you nothing else quite fills."

Steve stares at her, but he's not stopping her. He's listening.

"But you can't fill the hole in him." She feels a sting behind her eyes and can't quite keep from having to blink away the beginning of tears. "He has to grow right now with everything that's happened to him. He has to live with it, and if you push him to be what he was before, you'll just push him away because he's not that person anymore."

Steve backs away a step, looks away.

She's said her piece, but she also realizes there's no reason he should think it's any of her business.

There are words there, hiding in the awkward silence between them. She could tell him she's been here, right here, standing where he's standing right now. She could tell him Fitz couldn't stand to be with her and couldn't stand that she'd realized that and left. She could tell him that Fitz still can't bear to know she looks at him and sees someone he has ceased to be. She doesn't tell him anything. She stands here, right here, right now.

"He's my best friend."

She nods, swallows down the last impulse to cry, glad that it's gone. "I know."

* * *

Jemma thinks she's solved the problem with the misfiring nerves and asks James to fit in an extra visit. He never seems to mind, and he doesn't this time.

His arrival and settling in is normal and familiar enough that she wonders if her (woefully inadequate) talk with Steve actually did any good.

But then James flexes his metal fingers while she carefully pokes a needle into the shoulder above his arm. For the first time since he started coming to see her, he gives her the glimmer of a smile.


End file.
